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GEORG SIMMEL
\ :The Conflict in Modern Culture
and Other Essays
Translated, with an intrpduction by

K. P,HER :-ETiKORN
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,TEACHERS COLLEGE PRfiSS
Teachers College, Columbia University

,Neiv York

This is Hildie's book.

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BY TEACHERS COLLEGE PRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD

NUMBER

67-25064

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GEORG SIMMEL

Note to the Essay

1. Since life is the antithesis of form, and since only that which is somehow
formed can be conceptually described, the concept of life cannot be freed
from logical imprecision. The essence of life would be denied if one tried
to form an exhaustive conceptual definition. In order for conscious life to
be fully self-conscious, it would have to do without concepts altogether, for
conceptualization inevitably brings on the reign of forms; yet concepts are

essential to self-consciousness. The fact that the possibilities of expression

are so limited by the essence of life does not diminish its momentum as an
idea.

On the Concept and the Tragedy

ef Culture*

AN, UNLIKE THE ANIMALS, does not allow himself simply to be

absorbed by the naturally given order of the world. Instead, be
tears himself loose from it, places himself in opposition to it, making demands of it, overpowering it, then overpowered by it. From this first great
dualism springs the never-ending contest between subject and object,
which finds its second round within the realm of spirit itself. The spirit
engenders innumerable structures which keep on existing with a peculiar
autonomy independently of the soul that has created them, as well as
of any other that accepts or rejects them. Thus, man sees himself as
confronting art as well as law, religion as well as technology, science
as well as custom. Now he is attracted, now repelled by their contents,
now fused with them as if they were part of himself, now estranged and
untouched by them. In the form of stability, coagulation, persistent
existence, the spirit becomes object, places itself over against the streaming life, the intrinsic responsibility and the variable tensions of the soul.
Spirit, most deeply tied to spirit, for this very reason experiences innumerable tragedies over this radical contrast: between subjective life,
which is restless but finite in time, and its contents, which, once they
are created, are fixed but timelessly valid.
The concept of culture is lodged in the middle of this dualism. It is
based on a situation which in its totality can only be expressed opaquely,
through an analogy, as the path of the soul to itself. A soul is never

* A translation of 1'Der Begriff und die TragOdie der Kultur," in Georg Simmel,
Philosophie der Kultur: Gesammelte Essais (Leipzig: Werner Klinkhardt, 1911),
pp. 245-277.

only what it represents at a given moment, it is always "more," a higher

and more perfect manifestation of itself, unreal, and yet somehow
eternally present. We do not here refer to an ideal mode of being which
can be named or fixed at some place within the intellectual world; we
mean, rather, the freeing of its self-contained forces of tension, and the
development of its innermost core which obeys the intrinsic drive
towards form. Just as life-and especially its intensification in consciousness-contains its past history within itself in a more immediate
form than does any morsel of the inorganic world. At the same time,
this historical element circumscribes its future . . . in a manner which
is without analogy in the inorganic realm. The later form of an organism which is capable of growth and procreation is contained in every
single phase of organic life. The inner necessity of organic evolution is
far profounder than the necessity that a wound-up spring will be released. While everything inorganic contains only the present moment,
living matter extends itself in an incomparable way over history and

future.
Spiritual movements like will, duty, hope, the calling represent
psychic expressions of the fundamental destiny of life: to contain its
future in its present in a special form which exists only in the life
process. Thus the personality as a whole and a unit carries within itself
an image, traced as if with invisible lines. This image is its potentiality;
to free the image in it would be to attain its full actuality. The ripening
and the proving of man's spiritual powers may be accomplished through
individual tasks and interests; yet somehow, beneath or above, there
stands the demand that through all of these tasks and interests a
transcendent promise should be fulfilled, that all individual expressions
should appear only as a multitude of ways by which the spiritual life
comes to itself. This demand expresses a metaphysical precondition of
our practical and emotional existence, however remote it may seem
from our real life in the world. It symbolizes a unity which is not simply
a formal bond that circumscribes the unfolding of individual powers in
an always equal manner, but rather a process of unified development
which all individuals go through together. The goal of perfection intrinsically guides the unified development for which all individual
capacities and perfections are means.
Here we see the source of the concept of culture, which, however,
at this point follows only our linguistic feeling. We are not yet cultivated by having developed this or that individual bit of knowledge or
skill; we hecome cultivated only when all of them serve a psychic unity
which depends on but does not coincide with them. Our conscious
endeavors aim towards particular interests and potentialities. The
development of every human being, when it is examined in terms of

28

identifiable items, appears as a bundle of developmental lines which

expand in different directions and quite different lengths. But man does
not cultivate himself through their isolated perfections, but only insofar
as they help to develop his indefinable personal unity. In other words:
Culture is the way that leads from the closed unity through the
unfolded multiplicity to the unfolded unity.
This cannot refer only to a development towards something prearranged in the germinating forces of personality, sketched out \\~thin
itself, as a kind of ideal plan. Linguistic usage provides secure guidance
here. We will call a garden fruit cultivated which was perfected
through the work of a gardener from an inedible tree fruit. Alternately,
we might say that this wild tree has been cultivated into a garden fruit
tree. But if we were to manufacture a sail mast from the very same
tree, even though equally purposive work might be expended upon it,
we would not say that the tree had been cultivated into a mast. This
nuance of linguistic usage points out that, although the fruit could
not have developed from the indigenous powers of the tree without
human effort, it only fulfilled the potentialities which were already
sketched out in its constitution. This contrasts with the forn1 of the
mast, which is superimposed upon the trunk of the tree by a completely
alien system of purpose and without any predisposition of its own. It
is in this sense that we will not credit a man with genuine culture on
the basis of knowledge, virtuosity, or refinements which only act as
additives which come to his personality from an external realm of value.
Jn such a case, then, man is the possessor of traits of culture, but he is
not cultivated. A man becomes cultivated only when cultural traits
develop that aspect of his soul which exists as its most indigenous
drive and as the inner predetermination of its subjective perfection.
In this context the conditions finally emerge through which culture
resolves the subject-object dualism. We deny the applicability of the
concept in the absence of self-development of a psychic center. Nor
does the concept apply when this self-development does not depend
upon objective and extrinsic means and stations. A multitude of movements can lead the soul to itself. But where as the soul reaches this
precept purely from within-in religious ecstasies, moral self-devotion,
dominating intellectuality, and harmony of total life-it can still lack
the specific property of being cultivated. Not only because it may be
Jacking that external perfection which in ordinary language is depreciated as mere "civilization." This wouldn't matter at all. The state of
being cultivated, however, is not given its purest and deepest meaning
when the soul transverses the path from itself to itself, from its potentiality to its realization, exclusively on the strength of its subjective
powers. Admittedly, when viewed from the highest perspective these

GEORG SI!vI1iIEL

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

processes of perfection are perhaps the most valuable. But this only
proves that culture is not the only value for the soul. Its specific meanirig, however, is fulfilled only when man includes in this development
something which is extrinsic to him, when the path of the soul leads
over values which are not themselves of psychic quality. There are
objective spiritual forms-art and morality, science and purposively
formed objects, religion and law, technology and social norms-stations,
as it were, through which the subject has to go in order to gain that
special individual value (Eigenwert) which is called culture. It is the
paradox of culture that subjective life which we feel in its continuous
stream and which drives itself towards inner perfection cannot by itself
reach the perfection of culture. It can become truly cultivated only
through forms which have become completely alien and crystallized into
self-sufficient independence. The most decisive way of making this point
is to say that culture comes into being by a meeting of the two elements,
neither of which contain culture by itself: the subjective soul and the
objective spiritual product.
This is the root of the metaphysical significance of historical
phenomena. A number of decisive human activities build bridges
between subject and object which cannot be completed or which, if
completed, are again and again torn down. Some of these are: cognition;
above all, work; and in certain of their meanings, also art and religion.
The spirit sees itself confronted with an object towards which it is
driven by the force as well as spontaneity of its nature. It remains
condemned, however, in its own motion, as if in a circle which only
touches the object, and which, whenever it is about to penetrate it, is
abruptly forced back into its self-contained orbit by the immanent force
of its law. T11e longing for resolution of this intransigent, final dualism
is already expressed by the very derivation of the concepts subject-object
as correlates, each of which gains its meaning only from the other.
Work, art, law, religion, and so forth, transpose the dualism into special
atmospheric layers in which its radical sharpness is reduced and certain
fusions are permitted. But since these fusions are possible only under
special atmospheric conditions, they are unable to overcome the basic
estrangement of the parties, and remain finite attempts to solve an
infinite task. Our relationship, however, to those objects through which
we cultivate ourselves is different, since they themselves are spirit
objectified in ethical and intellectual, social and aesthetic, religious and
technical forms. The dualism in which a subject restricted to its own
boundaries is confronted with an object existing only for itself takes on
an incomparable form whenever both parties are spiritual. Tims the
subjective spirit has to leave its subjectivity, but not its spirituality, in
order to experience the object as a medium for cultivation. This is the

only way by which the form of dual existence which is immediately

posited with the existence of the subject organizes itself into an inner
unified set of mutual relations. Here the subject becomes objective and
the object becomes subjective. This is the specific attribute of the
process of culture. This process, however, reveals its metaphysical form
by transcending its individual contents. In order to understand this
more deeply, a further-reaching analysis is required of the objectification
of the spirit.
These pages took as their starting point the deep estrangement or
animosity which exists between the organic and creative processes of
the soul and its contents and products: the vibrating, restless life of
the creative soul, which develops toward the infinite contrasts with its
fixed and ideally unchanging product and its uncanny feedback effect,
which arrests and indeed rigidifies this liveliness. Frequently it appears
as if the creative movement of the soul was dying from its own product.
Herein lies one fundamental form of our suffering from our own past,
our own dogma, and our own fantasies. The discrepancy which exists
between the normal states of our inner life and its contents becomes
rationalized and somewhat less palpable whenever man, through his
theoretical or practical work, confronts himself with these spiritual
products, and views them as a sphere of the internal, independent
cosmos of the objective spirit. The external or non-material work in
which the spiritual life is condensed is perceived as a value of a special
kind. Life often goes astray by streaming into it (as if in a blind alley),
or continues to roll in its floods and deposits a rejected item at its place.
Nevertheless, it is an illustration of the specifically human richness that
the products of objective life belong to a stable substantive order of
values which is logical or moral, religious or artistic, technical or legal.
As carriers of values, their mutual interlocking and systemization frees
them from the rigid isolation that alienated them from the rhythms of
the processes of life. Thereby this process has gained a significance in
its own right which could not have been learned from the steady
progression of its course.
Extra value is added to the objectification of the spirit which,
although derived in the subjective consciousness, implies by this consciousness something which transcends itself. The value itself does not
always need to be positive, in the sense of something good. On the
contrary, the merely formal fact that the subject has produced something objective, that its life has become embodied from itself, is perceived as something significant, because the independence of the object
thus formed by the spirit can only resolve the basic tension between the
process and content of consciousness. Spatially natural ideas attenuate
the uncanny fact-that within the flowing process of consciousness

GEORG SIMMEL

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

something acquires a wholly fixed form-by legitimizing this stability

in their relation to an objectively extrinsic world. Objectivity provides
the corresponding service for the spiritual world. We feel the very life
of our thought tied to the unchangeability of logical norms, the full
spontaneity of our actions, to moral norms. The whole process of our
consciousness is filled with insights, traditions, and impressions of an
environment somehow formed by the spirit. All this rigidity points
to a problematic dualism opposed to the restless rhythm of this subjective psychic process within which it is generated as imagination and
as subjectively psychic content. Insofar as this contrast belongs to an
idealized world beyond the (realm of) individual consciousness, it will
be reduced to one level and law. It is certainly decisive for the cultural
meaning of the object with which we are here concerned that will and
intelligence, individuality and feelings, powers and emotions of individual souls and also of their collectivity are gathered in it. But only
where this does go on are those spiritual meanings brought to their
destination.
In the happiness of a creator with his work, as great or insignificant
as it may be, we find, beyond a discharge of inner tensions, the proof of
his subjective power, his satisfaction over a fulfilled challenge, a sense of
contentment that the work is completed, that the universe of valuable
items is now enriched by this individual piece. Probably there is no
higher sublime personal satisfaction for the creator than when we apperceive his work in all its impersonality, apart from our subjectivity.
Just as the objectifications of the spirit are valuable apart from the
subjective processes of life which have produced them, so, too, they
have value apart from the other life processes which as their consequences depend on them.
As widely and deeply as we look for the influences of the organiza
tion of society, the technical demands of natural phenomena, works of
art, and the scientific recognition of truth, custom, and morality, we
imply our recognition that these phenomena exist, and that the world
also includes this formulation of the spirit. This is a directive, as it
were, for our processes of evaluation. It stops with the unique quality
of the spiritually objective without questioning spiritual consequences
beyond the definition of these items themselves.
In addition to all subjective enjoyments by which a work of art
enters into us, we recognize as a value of special kind the fact that the
spirit created this vessel for itself. Just as there is at least one line
running between the artist's will and the individual property of the
work of art, which intertwines his objective evaluation of the work
with an enjoyment of his own actively creative force, we find a similarly
oriented line in the attitudes of the spectator. These attitudes differ

remarkably from our responses to natural phenomena. Ocean and

flowers, alpine mountains and the stars in the sky derive what we call
their value entirely from their reflections in subjective souls. As soon
as we disregard the mystic and fantastic anthropomorphizing of nature,
it appears as a continuous contiguous whole, whose undifferentiated
character denies its individual parts any special emphasis, any existence
which is objectively delimited from others. It is only human categories,
that cut out individual parts, to which we ascribe meaning and value.
Ironically, we then construct poetic fictions which create a natural
beauty that is holy within itself. In reality, however, nature has no
other holiness than the one which it evokes in us.
While the product of objective forces can only be subjectively
valuable, the product of subjective forces attains for us a kind of objective value. Material and non-material structures which have been invested with human will, artistry, knowledge, and emotions, represent
such objective items. We recognize their significance for, and enrichment of, existence, even if we completely disregard the fact that they
are being viewed, used, or consumed. Although value and importance,
meaning and significance are produced exclusively in the human soul,
they must affirm themselves continuously by contrast with the given
nature; but this does not harm the objective value of those structures
in which those creative human powers and values already have been
invested.
A sunrise which is not seen by any human eyes does not increase
the value of this world or make it more sublime, since this objective
fact by itself is without relevance to the categories of value. As soon,
however, as a painter invests his emotion, his sense for form and color
and his power of expression, in a picture of this sunrise, then we consider this work an enrichment, an increase in the value of existence as
a whole. The world seems to us somehow more deserving of its existence, closer to its ultimate meaning, whenever the human soul, the
source of all value has expressed itself in something which has become
part of the objective world. It does not matter now whether a later
soul will redeem the magic value from the canvas and dissolve it in the
stream of his own subjective sensations. Both the sunrise in nature
and the painting exist as realities. But where the sunrise attains value
only if it lives on in individuals, the painting has already absorbed suc?
life and made it into an object; hence our sense of value stops before 1t
as before something definite which has no need of subjectivization.
If we expand these arguments into a spectrum, one end will show
purely subjective life as the source and the locus of all meaning and
value. The other extreme will equate value with objectification. It
will insist that human life and action are valuable only insofar as they

GEORG SIMMEL

THE CONFLICT IN ?v!ODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

have something tangible to contribute to the idealistic, historical, materialistic cosmos of the spirit. According to this view, eveu Kant's
moral will get its value not in itself, not just by being psychologically
"there," but from being embodied in a form which exists in an objectively ideal state. Even sentiments and the personality obtain their
significance, in a good or a bad sense, by belonging to a realm of the
super-personal.
The subjective and objective spirit are opposed to one another;
culture asserts its unity by interpenetrating both. It implies a form of
personal perfection which can only be completed through the mediation of a super-personal form which lies outside the subject itself. The
specific value being cultivated is inaccessible to the subject unless it
is reached through a path of objectively spiritual realities. These again
represent cultural values only to the extent that they interpenetrate the
path of the soul from itself to itself, from what might be called its
natural state to its cultivated state.
Hence one can express the structure of the concept of culture in
the following terms. There is no cultural value which would be an
exclusively cultural value. On the contrary, it must first be a value
within some other context, promoting some interest or some capacity
of our being. It becomes a cultural value only when this partial development raises our total self one step closer to its perfected unity. It is
only in this way that two corresponding situations in intellectual history
become intelligible. The first is that men of low cultural interest frequently show remarkable indifference to individual elements of culture,
and even reject them-insofar as they fail to discover how these elements can contribute to the fulfillment of their total personalities.
(While there is probably no human product which must contribute
to culture, on the other hand there is probably nothing human that
could not contribute.) Second, there are phenomena (such as certain
formalities and refinements of life) which appear as cultural values
only in epochs that have become overripe and tired out. For whenever
life itself has become empty and meaningless, developments towards
its apex, which are based on the will or its potential, are merely
schematic, and not capable of deriving nourishment and promotion
from the substantive content of the things and ideas. This is analogous
to a sick body which cannot assimilate those substances from food which
a healthy body uses for growth and strength. In such a case individual
development is capable of deriving from social norms only the socially
correct form of conduct, from the arts only unproductive passive
pleasures, and from technological progress only the negative aspect of
the reduction of effort and the smoothness of daily conduct. The sort
of culture that develops is formally subjective, but devoid of inter-

weaving with those substantive elements so essential to culture. On

the one hand, there is such an emotionally centralized accentuation of
culture that the substantive content of objective factors becomes too
much and too diverting, since it thus neither will nor can involve itself
into cultural function. On the other hand, there is such a weakness
and emptiness of culture that it is not at all capable of including objective factors according to their substantive content. Both these phenomena, which first appear as instances opposed to the link between personal
culture and impersonal conditions, thus on closer examination only
confirm their connection.
That the final and most decisive factors in life are united in culture becomes especially obvious insofar as the development of each of
these factors can occur completely independently, not only without
the motivation by the ideal of culture but indeed by denying it. For
the view towards one or the other direction would be diverted from the
unity of its goal if it were to be determined by a synthesis between
these two. The men who produce the constant contents, the objective
elements of culture would probably refuse to borrow the motives and
values of their efforts directly from the idea of culture. In their case the
following inner situation exists: a twofold force is at work in the
founder of a religion and in an artist, in a statesman and in an inventor,
in a scholar and in a legislator. On the one hand, there is the expression of his essential powers, the exuberation of his nature to such a high
level that it frees by itself the contents of cultural life. And on the
other hand, there is the passionate dedication to the cause with its
immanent laws demanding perfection, so that the creative individual
becomes indifferent to himself and is extinguished. Within genius these
two streams are unified. To the genius, the development of the subjective spirit for its own sake and compelled by its own forces is indistinguishable from the completely self-negating devotion to an objective
task. Culture, as we have demonstrated, is always a synthesis. A synthesis, however, is not the only and most immediate form of unity, since
it always presupposes tl1e divisibility of elements as an antecedent or
as a correlative.
Viewing synthesis as the most sublime of formal relationships
between spirit and world could occur only during an age which is as
analytical as the modem. For insofar as the analytic elements are developed in it in ways similar to an organic germ's branching out into a
multiplicity of differentiated limbs, this stands beyond analysis and synthesis. This may be so because these two develop from an interaction
where each, on every level, presupposes the other, or else because the
analytically separated elements are later transformed through synthesis
into a unity which, however, is completely different from that which

GEORG SIMMEL

existed prior to the separation. The creative genius possesses such an

original unity of the subjective and the objective, which has first to be
divided so that it can be resuscitated in synthetic form in the prncess
of cultivation. This is why man's interest in culture does not lie on the
same level with pure selfdevelopment of the subjective spirit or with
pure dedication to a cause; instead cultural interests are attached to a
cause, occasionally as something secondary, reflex-like, as an abstract
generality which reach beyond the innermost and immediate value impulses of the soul. Even when the path of the soul to itself-one of
the primary factors in culture-carries the other factors along, culture
stays out of the game as long as the path of the soul transverses only
its own domain and perfects itself in the pure self-development of its
own essence.

If we consider the other factor of culture in its self-sufficient isolation-those products of the spirit which have grown into an ideal exis
tence independent of all psychological movements-even its most
indigenous meaning and value does not coincide with its cultural value.
Its cultural meaning is completely independent. A work of art is sup
posed to be perfect in terms of artistic norms. They do not ask for
anything else but themselves, and would give or deny value to the work
even if there were nothing else in the world but this particular work.
The result of research should be truth and absolutely nothing further.
Religion exhausts its meaning with the salvation which it brings to the
soul. The economic prnduct wishes to be economically perfect, and
does not recognize for itself any other than the economic scale of values.
All these sequences operate within the confines of purely internal laws.
Whether and to what extent they can be substituted in the development of subjective souls has nothing to do with its importance, which
is measured through purely objective norms which are valid for it alone.
On the basis of this state of affairs it becomes clear why we frequently
meet with an apparent indifference and even aversion to culture among
people who are primarily directed only towards subjects as well as among
those who are only directed towards objects. A person who asks only
for the salvation of the soul, or for the ideal of personal power, or for
purely individual growth which will not be affected by any exterior
force, will find that his evaluations miss the single integrating factor
of culture. The other cultural factor will be absent from a person who
strives only for the purely material completion of his works, so that
they fulfil! only their idea and no other that is only tangentially connected. The extreme representative of the first type is the stylite, of the
other, the specialist who is entrapped by the fanaticism for his specialty.
At first sight it is somewhat startling to observe that the supporters of
such undoubted "cultural values" as religiosity, personality formation,

Tl-IE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

and technologies of every kind should despise or fight the concept of

c~lture. However, this becomes immediately explicable when we con-

sider that culture always only means the synthesis of a subjective development with an objectively spiritual value. It follows then, that the
representation of either one of these elements must endanger their
mutual interweaving.
This dependence of cultural values on other indigenous value.
scales suggests why an object may reach a different point on the scale
of cultural values than on that of the merely material. There are a
variety of works, which remain far below the artistic, technical, intellectual level of what has already been accomplished, yet which, nevertheless have the capacity to join most efficiently the developmental
paths of many people as developers of their latent forces, as a bridge
to foe.ir next higher station. Just as we do not derive a completely
~atisfymg fulfillment from only the dynamically most forceful or aesthetically most complete impressions of nature (from which we derive the
emotional feelings by which stark and unresolved elements suddenly
became clear and harmonic to us-which we often owe to a quite
simple scene or the playing of shadows on a summer afteruoon), so we
cannot i~mediately infer from the importance of the intellectual product, as high or low as it may be in its native dimension what this work
will accomplish for us in the development of culture.' Everything depends here on the special significance of the work, which serves as a
secondary contribution to the general development of personalities.
And this contribution may even be inversely proportional to the unique
or intrinsic value of the work.
There are human products of almost ultimate perfection to which
we hav~ no access, or they no access to us, because of their perfect
mtegration. Such a work stays in its place, from which it cannot be
transplanted to our street as an isolated perfect item. Maybe we can
go to it, but we cannot take it along with us in order to raise ourselves
through it to our own perfection. For the modem feeling of life this
self-contained degree of perfection is, perhaps, represented by antiquity,
which denies itself the acceptance of the pulsations and restlessness of
our developmental tempo. Many a person may, therefore, be induced
today to search for some other fundamental factor especially for our
culture. It is similar with certain ethical ideals. Products of the objective intellect which have been so designated are, perhaps, destined more
than any others to carry the development from the mere possibility to
the highest perfection of our totality and to give it direction.
However, there are some ethical imperatives which contain an ideal
of such rigid perfection that it is impossible to draw energies from them
which we could include in our development. Despite their high position

GEORG SIMMEL

within the sequence of ethical ideas, as cultural elements they will easily
be subordinated to others which from their lower ethical position more
readily assimilate themselves into the rhythm of our development. Another reason for the disproportion between the substantive and cultural
values of a phenomenon may be found in the one-sided benefits they
confer on us. Various things may make us more knowledgeable or
better, happier or more adept, without actually helping to develop us,
but only an independently objective side or quality which is attached
to us. In this case we are naturally dealing with gradual and infinitely
subtle differences which empirically are hard to grasp, and which are
tied to the mysterious relationship between our unified total self and
our individual energies and perfections.
The completely closed reality which we call our subject can be
designated only by the sum of such individual phenomena, without
actually being composed by them. This peculiar relationship is not at
all exhausted by reference to the only logical category which is available, the parts and the whole. In isolation it could objectively exist in
any number of diverse subjects. It gains the characteristics of our own
subjectivity at its inside, where it fosters the growth of the unity of our
own being. With these characteristics, however, it somehow builds a
bridge to the value of objectivity. It is situated on our periphery by
which we are wedded to the objective, exterior, intellectual world. But
as soon as this function, which is directed to and nourished by the
outside, is severed from its meaning, which flows into our own center,
this discrepancy will be created. We will become instructed, we will
act more purposively, we will become richer in satisfactions and skills,
and perhaps even more educated-our process of cultivation, however,
does not keep in step. Although we come from a lower level of having
and knowing to a higher level, we do not come from ourselves as lower
beings to ourselves as higher beings.
I have stressed the possible discrepancy between the substantive
and cultural meaning of an object in order to bring out more emphatically the fundamental duality of elements which through their interweaving produce culture. This interweaving is unique because personal
development, although it pertains to the subject, can be reached only
through the mediation of objects. For this reason, to be cultivated
becomes a task of infinite dimensions, since the number of objects that
a subject can make its own is inexhaustible. Nuances of linguistic usage
describe this situation most exactly: the word "culture," when it is tied
to particular objects, as in religious culture, artistic culture, and so
forth, usually designates not the personal qualities of individuals, but
rather a general spirit. This means that in any given epoch, there is
an especially large number of impressive spiritual products available

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

thro~gh ~hich individuals are cultivated. But this plenitude of cultural

possibilities may actually constitute a threat to culture if it leads to
over-specialization. A person may acquire a remarkable 'degree of skill
or knowledge concerning a certain substantive content-an "artistic
culture" or a "religious culture"-without becoming truly cultivated.
On .the oth:r hand, it is still possible that substantive perfection of a
particular kmd may help bring about the completion of the person as
a total being.
. Within this s.tructure of culture there now develops a cleavage
which, of course, is already prepared in its foundation. It makes of
the ~ubject-object-synthesis a paradox, even a tragedy. The profound
du~hsm between subject and object survives their synthesis. The inner
logic by which each member develops independently does not necessarily coincide with that of the other. Knowledge, for example, whose
'.orms are so greatly .determined by the a priori dimensions of our spirit,
is constantly becommg completed by items which can be only accepted
~nd not. anticipated. But it does not seem to be guaranteed that these
1'.ems will serve the completion of the soul. It is similar with our practical and technical relationships to things; although we form them
accordmg to our purposes, they do not yield to us completely, but have
a logic and a power of their own. And it is highly doubtful that our use
of them will always coincide with the unique direction of our central
development. Indeed, everything objective possesses its own individual
logic. Once certain themes of law, of art, of morals have been created
-ev:n if they have been created by most individual and innermost spontaneity-we cannot control the directions in which they will develop.
Although we generate them, they must follow the guidelines of their
own inner necessity, which is no more concerned with our individuality
than are physical forces and their laws.
It is true that language rhymes and reasons for us; it collects the
fragmentary impulses of our own essence and leads them to a perfection
which we would not have reached on our own. Nevertheless, there is
no necessity in the parallel between objective and subjective develop
ments. Indeed, we sometimes even perceive language as a strange natural force which deflects and mutilates not only our expressions, but
also our most intimate intentions. And religion, which originated in
~he. search of the soul for itself, analogous to wings that carry the
mdigenous forces of the soul to their own height-it, too, has certain
formative laws, which having once come into existence, unfold with a
necessity that does not always coincide \vith our own. The anti-cultural
spirit with which religion is often reproached is not only its occasional
animosity toward intellectual, aesthetic, or moral values. It also refers
to the deeper issue that religion proceeds on its own course, which is

GEORG SIMMEL

determined by immanent logic, and into which it drags life along.

Whatever transcendental fulfillment the soul may find on this course,
religion rarely leads to that perfection of its totality which is called
culture.
Insofar as the logic of impersonal cultural forms is loaded with
dynamic tensions, harsh frictions ~evelo~ between these fom:s and the
inner drives and norms of personality which fulfill themselves m culture.
From the moment that man began to say "I" to himself, and became
an object beyond and in comparison with himself, from the s~me
moment in which the contents of the soul were formed together mto
a center point-from that time .and based. on that centra! form the
ideal had to grow according to which ~verythmg connecte~ with the center point formed a unit, self-contamed and self-sufficient. But. the
contents with which the "I" must organize itself into its own umfied
world do not belong to it alone. They ."re given to ~t from some
spatially, temporarily idealized realm outsid~; they are simultaneo~sly
the contents of different social and metaphysical, conceptual and ethical
worlds.
In these they possess forms and relationships among one another
that do not wish to dissolve into those of the "I." Through those contents the exterior worlds grasp the "I" and seek to draw it into them.
They aim to break up the centraliz~tion of ~ultural contents ar?und
the "I" and reconstitute them accordmg to their demands. Thus, m r~
ligious conflicts between the self-suflicienc~ o; free~om of :nan and his
subordination under divine order, and agam m social conflicts between
man as a rounded individual and man as a mere member of a social organism we are entangled because our life ideals are inevitably subsumed
under' other circles than those of our own "I"
.
Man often finds himself at the point of intersection of two circles
of objective forces and values, each of which would like to dr~g him
along. Often he feels himself .to be the ce?ter who ordei;> all hf.e contents around himself harmomcally accordmg to the logic of his personality. Tims he feels solidarity with each of these circles, insofar as
each belongs to a different circle, and is claimed by another law of
motion, his own. Thus our own essence forms an intersecting point of
itself with an alien circle of postulates. The process of culture, however, compresses the parties of this colli~ion into ~~tremely close co.nt~ct
by making the development of the sub1ect conditional on the assimilation of objective material. Thus the metaphysical dualism of s?bject
and object, which seemed to have been over~on;ie by the '.orn;iat10n of
culture, reappears in the conflict between sub1echve and ob1ecbve .dev~l
opments. It is possible, moreover, that the ob1ect can step outsid.e its
mediating role in an even more basic manner, and break up the bndges
40

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

over which the course of cultivation has been leading. At first it isolates
and alienates itself from the working subject through the division of
labor. Objects which have been produced by many persons can be
arranged in a scale according to the extent to which their unity stems
from the unified intellectual intention of one person, or from the partial
contributions of cooperating but uncomprehending individuals. The
latter pole is occupied by a city: it may strike us now as a meaningful
self-contained and organically connected whole; in fact, however, it was
not constructed according to any pre-existing plan, but arose out of the
accidental needs and desires of individuals. The former pole is exemplified by the products of a manufacturing plant in which twenty workers
have cooperated without knowledge of or interest in one another's separate work processes-while the whole, nevertheless, has been guided by
a personal central will and intellect. An intermediary position is taken
by a newspaper, insofar as its overall appearance can somehow be traced
to a leading personality, and yet it grows because of mutually accidental
contributions of the most diverse form and of diverse individuals who
are complete strangers to one another. Through the cooperative effort
of different persons, then, a cultural object often comes into existence
which as a total unit is without a producer, since it did not spring forth
from the total self of any individual. The elements are coordinated as
if by a logic and formal intention inherent in them as objective realities; their creators have not endowed them with any such logic and
intention. The objectivity of the spiritual content, which makes it independent of its acceptance or non-acceptance can be attributed here to
the production process. Regardless of whether they were or were not
intended by individuals, the finished product contains contents which
can be transmitted through the cultural process. This is different only
in degree from a little child who, in playing with letters of the alphabet,
may order them accidentally into good sense. The meaning exists objectively and concretely, no matter how naively it may have been produced.
If examined more closely, this appears as an extremely radical case
of an otherwise general human-spiritual fate. Most products of our
intellectual creation contain a certain quota which was not produced
by ourselves. I do not mean unoriginality or the inheritance of values or
dependence on traditional examples. Even despite of all these, a given
work in its total content could still be born in our own consciousness
although the consciousness would thus only hand on what it had already
received. On the contrary, there is always something significant in most
of our objective efforts which other people can extract even though we
were not aware of having deposited it there. In some sense it is valid
to say that the weaver doesn't know what he weaves. The finished
effort contains emphases, relationships, values which the worker did not

GEORG SIMMEL

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

intend. It is mysterious but unquestionably true: a material object takes

on a spiritual meaning not put into it but integral to the object's form.
Nature does not present this sort of problem. It is not the will of any art
ist that has given purity of style to the southern mountains, or gripping
symbolism to a stormy ocean. The realm of the purely natural is endowed
with the potential for meaning: it has or can have a part in all intellectual creations. The possibility of gaining a subjectively intellectual
content is invested in them as an objective form. In an extreme example, a poet may have coined a puzzle with the intention of a certain
solution. If, now, a different solution is found for it which fits as well,
as meaningfully, as the intended one, then it will be exactly as "right"
even though it was absolutely alien to his creative processes. It is contained within the created product as an idealized objectivity exactly
as is the first word for which the puzzle originally had been created.
These potentialities of the objective spirit show that it possesses
an independent validity, an independent chance of becoming re-subjectivized after its successful objectification, even when it was created by a
subjective spirit. This chance, however, does not need to be realized:
in the previous example, the second solution to the puzzle rightfully
exists in its objective meaning even before it is found, indeed, even
if it is never found. This peculiarity of the contents of culture is the
metaphysical foundation for the ominous independence by which the
realm of cultural products grows and grows as if an inner necessity
were producing one member after another. Frequently this happens
almost without relation to the will and personality of the producer and
independent of the acceptance by consumers.
The "fetishism" which Marx assigned to economic commodities represents only a special case of this general fate of contents of culture.
\Vith the increase in culture these contents more and more stand under
a paradox: they were originally created by subjects and for subjects:
but in their intermediate form of objectivity, which they take on in
addition to the two extreme instances, they follow an immanent logic
of development. In so doing they estrange themselves from their origin
as well as from their purpose. They are impelled not by physical necessities, but by truly cultural ones (which, however, cannot pass over the
physical conditions). What drives forth the products of the spirit is
the cultural and not the natural scientific logic of the objects. Herein
lies the fatefully immanent drive of all technology, as soon as it has
moved beyond the range of immediate consumption. Thus the industrial production of a variety of products generates a series of closely
related by-products for which, properly speaking, there is no need. It
is only the compulsion for full utilization of the created equipment
that calls for it. The technological process demands that it be com-

pleted by links which are not required by the psychic process. Thus vast
supplies of products come into existence which call forth an artificial
demand that is senseless from the perspective of the subjects' culture.
In several branches of the sciences it is no different. On one hand
for example, philological techniques have developed to an unsurpassabl~
finesse and methodological perfection. On the other hand the studv
of subject matter which would be of genuine interest to intellectua'l
culture does not replenish itself as quickly. Thus, the philological effort
frequently turns into micrology, pedantic efforts, and an elaboration of
the unessential into a method that runs on for its own sake an extensi?n of substantive norms whose independent path no longe~ coincides
;vith that of culture as a completion of life. TI1e same problem arises
m the development of fine arts, where technical skills have developed
to such an extent that they are emancipated from serving the cultural
total purpose of art. By obeying only the indigenous material logic the
technique at this point develops refinement after refinement. How~ver,
these .refinements represent only its perfection, no longer the cultural
meanmg of art. That extreme and total specialization-of which there
are complaints nowadays in all areas of labor, but which nevertheless
subord!nates their pr~gress under its laws with demonical rigor-is only
a special form of this very general cultural predicament. Objects, in
their development, have a logic of their own-not a conceptual one, nor
a natural one, but purely as cultural works of man; bound by their
own laws, they turn away from the direction by which they could join
the personal development of human souls. This is not that old familiar
intrusion of the real'.11 of ultimate ends, not the primacy of technique
so often !amented m advanced cultures. That is something purely
psychological, Wlthout any firm relationship to the objective order of
things. Here, however, we are dealing with the immanent logic of
cul~ural phen~mena .. Man becomes the mere carrier of the force by
which this logic dommates their development and leads them on as if
in the tangent of the course through which they would return to the
cultural development of living human beings-this is similar to the
process by which because of strict adherence to logic our thoughts
are lead into theoretical consequences which are far removed from
those originally intended. This is the real tragedy of culture.
In gen~ral we call a rdationship tragic-in contrast to merely
sad or extnnsically destructive-when the destructive forces directed
against some being spring forth from the deepest levels of this very
being; or when its destruction has been initiated in itself and forms
.
'
the logical devel?pment of the very structure by which a being has
bmlt its ow_n positive form. It is the concept of culture that the spirit
creates an mdependent objectivity by which the development of the

GEORG SIMMEL

THE CONFLICT IN MODERN CULTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS

subject takes its path. In this process the integrating and culturally
conditioning element is restricted to an unique evolution which continues to use up the powers of other subjects, and to pull them into
its course without thereby raising them to their own apex. The development of subjects cannot take the same path which is taken by that
of the objects. By following the latter, it loses itself either in a dead
end alley or in an emptiness of its innermost and most individual life.
Cultural development places the subject even more markedly outside
of itself through the formlessness and boundlessness which it imparts
to the objective spirit, because of the infinite number of its producers.
Everybody can contribute to the supply of objectified cultural contents
without any consideration for other contributors. This supply may have
a determined color during individual cultural epochs that is, from
within there may be a qualitative but not likewise quantitative boundary. There is no reason why it should not be multiplied in the direction of the infinite, why not book should be added to book, work of
art to work of art, or invention to invention. The form of objectivity
as such possesses a boundless capacity for fulfillment. This voracious
capacity for accumulation is most deeply incompatible with the forms
of personal life. The receptive capacity of the self is limited not only
by the force and length of life, but also through a certain unity and
relative compactness of its form. Therefore, the self selects, with determined limits from among the contents which offer themselves as means
for its individual development. The individual might pass by what
his self-development cannot assimilate, but this does not always succeed so easily. The infinitely growing supply of objectified spirit places
demands before the subject, creates desires in him, hits him with
feelings of individual inadequacy and helplessness, throws him into
total relationships from whose impact he cannot withdraw, although
he cannot master their particular contents. Thus, the typically problematic situation of modem man comes into being: his sense of being
surrounded by an innumerable number of cultural elements which are
neither meaningless to him nor, in the final analysis, meaningful. In
their mass they depress him, since he is not capable of assimilating them
all, nor can he simply reject them, since after all, they do belong potentially within the sphere of his cultural development. This could be
characterized with the exact reversal of the words that refer to the
first Franciscan monks in their spiritual poverty, their absolute freedom
from all things which wanted to divert the path of their souls: Nihil
habentes, omnia possidentes (those who have nothing own everything). Instead man has become richer and more overloaded: Cultures
omnia habentes, nihil possidentes (cultures which have everything own
nothing).
These experiences have already been discussed in various forms.

(I have elaborate~ th~m in my Philosophy of Money for a larger number of concrete h1stoncal fields.) What we want to bring out here is
their deep roots in the concept of culture. 111e total wealth of this
concept consists in the fact that objective phenomena are included in
the process of development of subjects, as ways or means, without
the'.eby losing their objectivity. Whether this does in fact bring the
s?b1ect to the highest degree of perfection may remain an open question. In ~ny case, the metaphysical intention which attempts to unify
the pnnciples of the subject and of the object finds here a guarantee of
its success: the metaphysical question finds an historical answer. In
?ultural forms, the spirit reaches an objectivity which makes it at once
mdependent of all accidents of subjective reproductions, and yet usable
for the centra! purpos.e of. subjective perfection. While the metaphysical
answers to this question m general tend to cut it off by somehow dem?n~trating that the subject-object contrast is unimportant, culture
msists ~n the full opposition of the parties, on the super-subjective logic
of spmtually formed objects through which the subject raises itself
beyond itself to itself.
One of the basic capacities of the spirit is to separate itself from
.
itself-to ~reate fo;ms, ideas and values that oppose it, and only in this
form to_ gam consc10usness of itself. This capacity has reached its widest
extent m the. process of culture. Here the spirit has pressed the object
most energetically towards the subject, in order to lead it back into the
subject. But this liaison dissolves because of the object's indigenous
logic, through which the subject regains itself as more adequate and
perfected. The tendency of creative people to think not about the cultural value of their work, but about its substantive meaning which is
circ~~s~ri~ed by its unique idea, develops logically but almost imperceptibility mto cancature, into a form of specialization which is secluded
from life, into a purely technical (and technological) self-satisfaction
1~hich does. ~~t find its path back to man. This objectivity makes possible the div!Slon of labor, which collects the energies of a whole complex of personalities in a single product, without considering whether
individuals will be able to use it for their own development, or whether
it will s;itisfy only extrinsic and peripheral needs. Herein lies the deeper
rationale for the ideals of Ruskin to replace all factory labor by the
artistic labor of individuals.
The division of labor separates the product as such from each
individual contributor. Standing by itself, as an independent object,
it is suitable to subordinate itself into an order of phenomena, or to
serve an individual's purposes. Thereby, however, it loses that inner
animation which can only be given to a total work by a complete
human being, which carries its usefulness into the spiritual center of
other individuals. A work of art is such an immeasurable cultural value

GEORG SIMMEL

precisely because it is inaccessible to any division of labor, because the

created product preserves the creator to the innermost degree.
.
\;I/hat in Ruskin's work might appear as a hatred of culture m
reality is a passion for culture. He wants to reverse the division of
labor which, by emptying cultural content of its subject, and giving it
an inanimate objectivity, tears it from the genuinely cultural process.
The tragic development which ties culture to the objectivity of contents, but charges the contents with a logic of their own, and. thus
withdraws them from cultural assimilation by subjects, is now evident
to everyone who observes the infinite potential for multiplying the contents of the objective spirit at random. Since culture does not possess
a concrete unity of form for its contents, and since each creator places
his product as if in an unbounded space next to that of the .other, ~he
mass character of phenomena comes into existence. Everythmg claims
with a certain right to be of cultural value, and creates in us a wish
thus to utilize it. The lack of unity in the objectified spirit permits
it a developmental tempo behind which the subjective spirit must increasingly lag. The subjective spirit, meanwhile, does not know how
it can completely protect its unity of form from the touch and the
temptation of all these "things." The superior force of the object over
the subject, so general in the course of the world, temporarily checked
by the fortunate balance we call culture, can once again be felt as the
objective spirit develops unboundedly. The adornment and overloading of our lives with a thousand superfluous items, from which, however we cannot liberate ourselves; the continuous "stimulation" of
civilized man who in spite of all this is not stimulated to expressions
of individual creativity; the more acquaintance with or enjoyment of a
thousand things which our development cannot include and which stay
in it only as ballast-all these long-lamented cultural ills are nothing
more than reflections of the emancipation of the objectified spirit. Thus
cultural contents are bound to follow a logic which eventually is independent of their cultural purpose, and which continuously leads them
further away from it. The situation is tragic: even in its first moments
of existence culture carries something within itself which, as if by an
intrinsic fat~, is determined to block, to burden, to obscure and divide
its innermost purpose, the transition of the soul from its incomplete
to its complete state.
.
.
.
The great enterprise of the spirit succeeds mnumerable times m
overcoming the object as such by making a~ _object of itself, ret~ming
to itself enriched by its creation. But the spmt has to pay for this selfperfection with the tragic potential t?at a logic and _dyn~mic
inevitably created by the unique laws of its own world which mcreasmgly
separates the contents of culture from its essential meaning and value.

i:

3
A Chapter

1n

the Philosophy

ef Value*

HE FACT OF ECONOMIC EXCHANGE confers upon the value of things

something super-individual. It detaches them from dissolution
in the mere subjectivity of the agents, and causes him to determine
each other reciprocally, since each exerts its economic function in the
other. The practically effective value is conferred upon the object, not
merely by its own desirability, but by the desirability of another object.
Not merely the relationship to the receptive subjects characterizes this
value, but also the fact that it arrives at this relationship only at the
price of a sacrifice; while from the opposite point of view this sacrifice
appears as a good to be enjoyed, and the object in question, on the
contrary, as a sacrifice. Hence the objects acquire a reciprocity of counterweight, which makes value appear in a quite special manner as an
objective quality indwelling in themselves. \;I/bile the object itself is
the thing in controversy-which means that the sacrifice which it represents is being determined-its significance for both contracting parties
appears much more as something outside of these latter and self-existent
than if the individual thought of it only in its relation to himself. We
shall see later how also isolated industry, by placing the workman over
against the demands of nature, imposes upon him the like necessity of
sacrifice for gaining of the object, so that in this case also the like relationship, with the one exception that only a single party has been
changed, may endow the object \vith the same independent qualities,
yet with their significance dependent upon its own objective conditions.
Desire and the feeling of the agent stand, to be sure, as the motor
energy behind all this, but from this in and of itself this value form

'Reprinted from The American Journal of Sociology, V (5): 577-603, 1900.

The translation corresponds closely to Part II of Chapter 1 of the 1907 edition of
Philosophie des Geldes.